Rarely do I get excited about a new product. Such is the case with the Kinetic Books physics software. High school level physics is a subject homeschool parents are often leery of attempting. That’s all changed with the offerings from Kinetic Books.

Conceptual Physics is the digital physics textbook designed for high school students or college students who have never taken physics. This is the easiest of the Kinetic Books physics courses available and should be accessible to non-science oriented students. It does require algebra to understand and work the problems.

The textbook covers topics in mechanics, mechanical waves, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, light and optics, special relativity, quantum physics, and nuclear physics. The software includes a variety of interactive means to help students grasp the material. These include whiteboards, interactive problems, sample problems, and derivations of equations, interactive checkpoints, and quizboards.

Whiteboards are a sequence of narrated animations. The narration can be muted and read as text. Each animation can be repeated as often as a student requires. The whiteboard information is an additional presentation of the material presented in the text of that textbook page. The textbook page must still be read to get all the information provided.

Interactive problems are often simulations that require you to input information that will vary the outcome of the simulation. The goal is to solve the problem by entering the correct variables. Sample problems and derivations of equations require students to use the knowledge they have gained to solve problems and equations. These problems have explanations, resources, and step by step solutions to help students understand how to solve that type of problem.

Interactive checkpoints are problems, which initially have all the problem solving strategies hidden. As needed the student may request to see the variables of the problem, the strategy needed to solve the problem, the physics principles or equations used, and the step-by-step solution. After inputting the answer to the problem, the student may check to see if his solution is correct.

Quizboards are a means to see how well the student understands the material in the chapter. Students may answer the question, check to see if they have the correct answer, get a hint, or get the solution. Quizboards do not track students answers. Once a student goes on to another quizboard question, his answer is lost. This does allow the student to go back and retry questions he had trouble with.

Conceptual problems follow each chapter. These problems were designed to be graded using the online assessment of homework. The server grades the questions that it can grade and forwards questions it cannot grade. The software is designed so that some problems may vary the variables used in the problem. The server is able to grade these problems. Homeschoolers may pay a fee of $50 per year that allows them to grade two students with the service. Currently this service provides answers, but the publisher is working on providing the fully worked out solutions for all problems in the future.

It is possible to print out the conceptual problems pages and have your student answer these on paper. Answers are available by selecting the view answers link for all the odd numbered problems.

The software gives you the ability to vary the text size, highlight text, and add short notes to pages. There is no index to the book, but there is a search tool provided on every page.

Let’s look at cost now. That’s another great benefit of Conceptual Physics. The individual purchase price of Conceptual Physics is $29.95. Add Virtual Physics Lab, also from Kinetic Books, and for an additional $29.95, you’ve got 16 physics labs. That’s $60. Add in the grading package and you’re cost is $110.00.

The software installed easily. I chose to install without turning off my virus protection software. The install program said this would make the install take longer. It took 6 minutes for my computer to install the software. Conceptual Physics will work on both Windows and Macintosh computers.

Windows Requirements
Win98/2000/XP
400 MB Disk Space
128 MB RAM minimum
A Browser – IE version 6.0 or higher, or Firefox 1.0 or higher
Note: it worked fine using Netscape 7.2, which uses Firefox.

Macintosh Requirements
MAC OS X version 10.2 or higher
370 MB Disk Space
128 MB RAM minimum
A Browser – Safari version 1.0.2 or higher